Lemelson-MIT Inventors PD

The Lemelson-MIT Program, located within the School of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has been celebrating outstanding inventors and working to inspire young people to pursue creative lives and careers through invention for more than twenty years. We are now working to share our experience with educators across the U.S. as we believe that the development of creative and inventive mindsets is critical to young people’s ability to thrive in today’s technologically driven, rapidly changing world.

Our examinations of the demographics of current patent holders, people who possess ‘creative and inventive mindsets’, suggest that advanced degrees in STEM field/disciplines are highly associated with technological inventions. However, STEM knowledge must be accompanied by other types of knowledge, skills and ways of thinking such as creativity and inventiveness which are related to but distinctly different from STEM knowledge and skills. We are hosting two summer professional development workshops to share our insights into invention education with other educators working to provide developmentally appropriate learning opportunities to middle and high school students.

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP

Developing Creative, Inventive Mindsets and Skills that Prepare Middle and High School Students for Careers in Rapidly Changing World

WHO SHOULD ATTEND
Middle and high school teacher leaders, after school professionals and other educators.
WHAT WILL YOU LEARN
The three-day workshop will develop educators’ capacity to help kids learn to think and act as an inventor while developing a solution to a real-world problem. The workshop includes strategies for the effective use of JV InvenTeam activity guides made available free of charge on the Lemelson-MIT website here.

PRESENTERS/HANDS-ON WORKSHOP FACILITATORS
Workshop sessions will be taught/facilitated by Lemelson-MIT Program staff (former teachers) and former InvenTeam teachers.